In this session attendees will be participating in a conversation that dissects the skill of listening. In an age of communicating through emoticons, memes and alone togetherness connectivity has failed to live up to its potential of creating strong community of practice that co-creates regularly. This sessions is about digging deep into biases, being honest about one’s triggers, world views and perspectives of empathy. The need for this discussion is rooted in the relationship between being aware of our own place of knowing and how to participate in effective, productive conversations. We will talk about how to design conversations by harnessing the knowledge of those already in the space.
This session is built at the intersection of several practices including The Art of Hosting, Theory U and the books Tell Me So I Can Hear You and Thanks for the Feedback. Most importantly, it will be driven by the connections the attendees contribute. This session is not structured by bullet points, rather designed to flex to the needs and curiosities of the participants.

Conversational Practice

Our goal for this conversation is to have the participants engaged to the level that we won’t be tweeting. This session will include participant driven exercises taken from several resources including The Art of Hosting. Time allowing and depending on the needs of the participants this session may include:
Empathic Listening (an exercise is listening)
Amygdala Hijack (identifying your triggers for grounded conversations)
Four-fold Practice (a framework for mindful conversations)